Create a Watercolor Text Effect in Photoshop

In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at a quick and easy way to execute a watercolor text effect in Photoshop. By combining the right font, an awesome set of brushes, a filter and a few other subtle techniques, realistic watercolor text is a breeze to create. This tutorial is geared to anyone who has played around in Photoshop a dozen or more times. Let’s jump right in!

What We Are Creating

Gather A Few Materials

There are only two resources that you’ll need to pull off this effect and one of them isn’t really even required. First, you’ll need a single or set of high-resolution watercolor brushes. For this specific tutorial, I’m using this brush set provided by WeGraphics. The second resource you’ll need is a paper texture. There are thousands of these available on the web, just look around at DeviantArt and you’ll find one suited for the job. Let’s jump into the tutorial.

Step 1: Background Placement

Choose a size for the project you want to work on and place the paper texture into the project. If you want to follow step-by-step, I’m using a 660px X 300px canvas size.

Step 2: Type Placement

Throw out some text on the canvas. In my opinion a serif, script or handdrawn font is more appealing with the watercolor look. Here, I’ve used the font “Larry Regular” at 178pt with the Standard Ligatures turned on. This can be located in the Character Window near the bottom. The color of the text is not significant at this point.

Step 3: Layer Style Options

On the text layer, drop the fill down to 0% and double click the layer to bring up the Layer Style options. Add an inside stroke of 1px at an opacity around 44%. The color of the stroke should match the color that you plan to use with the watercolor brush. I went with the color #023d8b for this tutorial. This is what you should have so far:

Step 4: Select Text

Hold down (CTRL – for PC) or (CMD – for Mac) while clicking the thumbnail of the type layer to select the text. Now add a new layer above all others and make sure that you are on this newly created layer. The text should still be selected, indicated by a dashed line surrounding the text.

Step 5: Apply Brush

While on the newly created layer and with the outline of the text still selected, grab your brush tool and choose a watercolor brush that is larger than the height and width of your text. If you downloaded the set of brushes mentioned at the beginning of the article, try using the brush titled “Water 6”. This particular brush is 1,895 pixels wide and is plenty large enough to cover a line of text.

Make sure you have your foreground color set to match the same color that you set your stroke at, #023d8b for this example. Simply click on the layer to apply a watercolor effect inside the outlined text. You may have to repeat this step several times until you get to look the way you want, CTRL +Z is your friend in this case.

Remove the selection and you can see that the effect is coming along nicely.

Looks pretty good, but there is still one more step we can take to make it a bit more convincing…

Step 6: Apply Filter

While still on the layer where you applied the watercolor brush, go to Filter > Distort > Ripple… Change the amount to around 36% and the size to medium and hit OK. This will help to remove some of those straight lines and add a slight ripple effect along the edges of the text. You’ll see that the stroke remains in place allowing the watercolor to spill slightly over the edges.

Wrapping Things Up

So there it is, digital watercolor typography the easy way. If you want more tutorials and brushes, I’ve written another post compiling several watercolor tutorials and brush sets. There are a number of places where this type treatment could come in handy in both print and web design alike. If you enjoyed the tutorial, or know of some ways to improve it, I would love to here your thoughts in the comment section.

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